What if Flash was created in 2026? While building a 'new Flash,' you can open and edit old files.

In the past, many animations, games, and video content created using Adobe Flash were released. However, Adobe ended distribution and updates of Flash Player on December 31, 2020 , making it essentially impossible to create or run new content. Game developer Bill Beck explains his project to create a new Flash, based on the concept of 'What would happen if Flash had been created in 2026?'

Building a new Flash - by Bill
https://bill.newgrounds.com/news/post/1607118

Bill is developing a 2D animation production tool that allows users to create animations and games in the same way as the old Flash. It is designed to run on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and its goal is to recreate the production environment that Flash offered, such as timeline editing, drawing tools, and animation functions, using modern technology. It has been built from scratch in C# , utilizing the UI framework Avalonia and the drawing library SkiaSharp .

Bill's Flash recreates many of the features familiar to Flash users, such as the 'Timeline' for managing animations over time, animation editing using keyframes, drawing tools such as brushes and pens for drawing vector images, and Flash's five paint modes. It also includes a 'Symbol Library' material management function commonly used in Flash, allowing you to efficiently create animations by reusing the same characters and parts.

Another feature is the compatibility function that allows you to open old Flash production files such as '.fla' and 'XFL' with new Flash tools. After Adobe Flash support ended, it became difficult to edit existing works, but the compatibility of the new Flash makes it possible not only to play but also to edit, which may allow you to revive old content that has stopped being updated.

According to Bill, this project is not just a prototype or concept project, but is being developed as a full-fledged production environment that can actually be used for animation production. He says that he is currently adding new features, and that in the future he plans to provide the ability to export works in formats such as HTML5.

You can see a list of new Flash features on the official page, but the specific release schedule has not been revealed at the time of writing.

Building a new Flash - by Bill
https://bill.newgrounds.com/news/post/1607118

When Bill's blog about the new Flash became a hot topic on the social news site Hacker News, a comment was posted saying, 'When I was at Adobe, around 2008-2010, I developed a 'Flash crawler' to index all Flash content on the Internet.' According to the user, Adobe at the time started with the most popular sites, expanded the crawl, acquired large amounts of data, analyzed Flash content as it ran, and indexed all of that information. He also said that they had built a group of servers dedicated to analyzing Flash, and that 'if Adobe still has that data, it might be valuable enough to donate to the Computer History Museum.'